The last Jew in Afghanistan marks Yom Kippur alone

Zebulon Simentov, the last Jew in Afghanistan, is once again marking the Jewish holy day of fasting in solitude,

Zebulon Simentov, the last Jew in Afghanistan, is once again marking the Jewish holy day of fasting in solitude, in a deserted synagogue in the capital of a devoutly Islamic nation.

“I have everything I need for the 24 hours of praying and fasting,” Simentov tells AFP before the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, at sunset on Friday.

Around two decades ago, there were still about 20 Afghan Jewish families living in Kabul, although all were from Herat — the largest city in northwestern Afghanistan near the border with Iran. Through the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the subsequent civil war and the Taliban’s 1996-2001 regime, all went to Israel or moved to neighbouring former Soviet republics — undoing a Jewish presence built up from the seventh century.

Story continues below this ad

Only Simentov has been left behind, becoming by default the guardian of Kabul’s empty synagogue.

“I have been the only Jew in Afghanistan for two years,” he says. Ishaq Levin, the synagogue’s former guardian, died from illness two years ago aged around 80.

Simentov says it is not easy to practise his religion alone. But he has obtained special permission from a rabbi in Tashkent, capital of neighbouring Uzbekistan and home to 15,000 Jews, to slaughter his own meat in the kosher way that can normally only be done by a special rabbi.

Otherwise this former carpet salesman appears perfectly integrated into Kabul.